[_The mass strike of the Belgian workers was carried to an issue
last week. The motion of the Liberal member which brought the
strike to a close, while it does not specifically grant the
reform asked for by the Socialists, is considered such a lien on
government action as to amount to a victory for them. These
interpretations of the larger significance of the strike from
different angles were, of course, written while the struggle was
going on._
_Mr. Walling, who is a member of the radical wing of the
Socialist party, is a student of international Socialism, his
most recent book being The Larger Aspects of Socialism. He was
in Russia during the Revolution, and knew intimately the details
of the great Russian general strike of 1905._—Ed.]
I.
GRAHAM TAYLOR
The nation-wide strike for manhood suffrage in Belgium which
paralyzed the industries and almost suspended the normal life of
the people was foreshadowed in a spectacular demonstration in
Brussels two years ago.
On August 15, 1911, the streets of that gay, medieval capital
witnessed scenes which every American who looked on knew were
making history. Over 60,000 men, from larger and smaller places
throughout Belgium, took a day off without wages and paid their
way to the capital of their country, in order to voice their
protest against the unjust inequalities of the suffrage. The show
of force by the extraordinary police and military precautions
betrayed the furtive apprehension of both the municipal and
national governments as to what might happen. With no sign of
timidity or intimation of being overawed, this vast industrial
army marched ten abreast for hours—silent, grim, determined,
united, unarmed—between long files of armed soldiery which lined
the curbs, and past stronger detachments of all arms of the
service massed at strategic centers.
The great procession assembled at the Socialist headquarters, a
large and impressive building bearing the significant name _Maison
de Peuple_, the House of the People. The permanent background of
the stage in the assembly hall of that building is a colossal head
of Jesus of Nazareth, the reverent work of a Belgian Socialist.
This House of the People is the most practical expression, or
perhaps demonstration, of the co-operative commonwealth in
miniature, which is to be found anywhere in the world. Starting
with a sack of potatoes and a bag of flour, these wage-workers in
ten years erected a building costing $250,000. Of this sum, which
was loaned by the national bank, they had then paid $100,000 and
had assets worth three times as much as the balance due on the
mortgage, which they continue to reduce by annual payments.
In this four-story semi-circular building, at one of the principal
business centers, ample accomodations are provided for a great
variety of practical agencies. A café, which paid a profit of
$2,400 in three months, shares the front of the ground floor with
a large co-operative department store, where dry goods, house
furnishings, clothing, meats, groceries, butter and milk, hats,
hosiery and shoes are sold. A bakery, with a capacity of 125,000
loaves of bread a week; a coal depot, with twenty-nine delivery
carts; a laundry, and a clothing manufactory are among the
business enterprises conducted here.
The 19,000 co-operating families receive as their share of the
profits 12 per cent of the money they pay for bread, 6 per cent of
what their groceries cost them and 5 per cent of the purchase
price of their clothing. Among the protective features are an
employment bureau for men and women, a pharmacy and a corps of
thirteen physicians rendering free service to all members of one
year’s standing, and a sick benefit society with 8,000 members.
Singing and ethical classes are maintained for children and a
well-trained orchestra and choral club for adults. Small halls
adequately provide for the meetings of the trade sections, and a
great auditorium, seating 2,436 persons, rallies the festival
gatherings and supplies room for political mass meetings.
From this national center the procession of mid August took up its
line of march, carrying banners which took the keynote of their
inscriptions from the following figures emblazoned everywhere:
993,070 have 1 vote;
395,866 have 2 votes;
704,549 voters, having two, three or four votes, cast 1,717,871
votes, a majority of 88,523 over those having one vote;
One man one vote!
In Belgium a man over twenty-five years of age gets an extra vote
if he owns property. He is granted another vote if he has a
university diploma. He casts a fourth vote if he is over
thirty-five years of age, is the father of a family and pays taxes
on more than a certain amount of property. The majority of the
industrial population thus have only one vote, while the rural,
well-to-do and richer people outvote each wage earner by two,
three or even four votes. The rural population thus controls the
city industrial population and the church is charged by the
Socialists with controlling the rural vote.
Against this rule of the minority, this great demonstration of
1911 was a protest. But to the onlooker from abroad it then seemed
to be a patriotic proclamation of Belgium’s one great hope of
national evolution without revolution. The primary cause of the
movement which has culminated in the present national strike was
the defeat of the liberal and Socialist coalition in parliament by
a combination of the government and clerical forces in the
elections of 1912. The Socialist congress summoned to meet the
issue brought to a crisis by that event decided upon a general
strike as a last resort if all other means of obtaining manhood
suffrage failed. But before resorting to that measure a general
suffrage bill was introduced into parliament by the Socialists and
supported by the liberals. As serious consideration of it was
refused by the clerical and government authorities, a general
strike was voted on April 14.
Whatever the full effect of this national political strike may be,
those who are the keenest observers concede that the making of
history is in the movement of Belgian labor for one man one vote
suffrage.
Certain it is that a movement of the people capable of maintaining
and increasing for so many years a labor vote in parliament until
it numbers more than one-third of the total must be reckoned with.
If now the tolerance of this Belgian Socialist Party toward those
who honestly oppose its principles and methods, at this supreme
crisis in its history and the national development, grows with its
strength and equals its determination, it will improve the
greatest opportunity the Socialist cause has ever had in the
sphere of practical politics to demonstrate and promote its
co-operative commonwealth.
II.
WILLIAM ENGLISH WALLING
If the Belgian strike is a world-event of the first magnitude for
the general public, it has a still greater significance for the
world’s ten or twenty million Socialists. The two wings of the
Socialist movement are equally interested; the reformers and
conciliators, because the strike aims at a purely political
reform, and involves co-operation with a part of the capitalists,
both in order to win success now and in order to get immediate use
out of the suffrage after it is won; the revolutionists and
advocates of class struggle because the strike forces a large loss
on many unwilling employers and gives training for later and more
aggressive strikes for the purpose of raising wages, cutting down
profits, and paving the way to social revolution.
These essential facts are being widely understood. Take, for
example, the following editorial paragraphs from the influential
and progressive, but by no means radical, _Chicago Tribune_:
“For years the thinkers of the movement in Europe were building
up theories about the ‘political mass strike.’ These theories
have now been put into practice in Belgium with remarkable
precision.
“The strike in Belgium is not a precipitated strike. For months
the Socialists of that country have been making preparations for
it. They have been collecting money, storing provisions, and,
what is even more important, educating the workingmen to their
theories, training them to respond to the strike call like
drilled soldiers. It is not an emotional, not an impulsive
strike, therefore, but a coolly thought out, shrewdly calculated
battle....
“As a result of this careful planning and training by the
leaders 400,000 workingmen responded to Socialist colors with
the precision of a trained army. The strike is both a battle and
military review. The Socialists now have a clear and adequate
view of their strength and numbers. The issue involved in this
strike, which is uniform as opposed to plural voting, may be
lost. The strike may even be called off by the Socialists
themselves after a week or so if the government does not yield
by that time. But the advantages which Socialism has gained by
this census of its army is incalculable. It knows how much of
the Belgian public is behind it and to what extent. This time
the general strike is used to combat a single abuse of the
government. In the future the same working masses may be
directed against the present régime as a whole. It is a strike
now. It may be a civil war or revolution the next time.”
But while the capitalistic _Tribune_ is so sympathetic and
optimistic, the leading labor union paper of this country, the
_United Mine Workers’ Journal_ has been highly sceptical and
pessimistic:
“The strikers say they are ready and have the means to hold out
six weeks.
“What if the other class should elect to hold out for twelve
weeks; that is, if the strike should become a ‘lock-out?’
“There is no doubt but that the class against whom they are
striking, the propertied class, who hold the unfair political
advantage over them, could store more per member than the
workers.
“We wish our brothers every success. Hope they will obtain what
is undoubtedly theirs by right. But, in our opinion, unless the
strike results in a test of force instead of passive endurance
(and this same is more than probable) the workers’ needs will
drive them back to their tasks before those who have been
enriched by their labor will consent to give up the political
advantages on which their economic advantages are based.”
Why this remarkable reversal of the opinions that might have been
expected? Why have some of the richest Liberals in Belgium
supported the strike?
The Belgians are striking for a right the French obtained in
1876—equal suffrage. Yet who are the chief beneficiaries of the
political democracy of France? The condition of the laborers is
about the same as in Belgium. The only difference is that in
France the industrial and urban capitalists now hold the balance
of power between the laborers on the one hand and the reactionary
agrarians, landlords and employing peasants on the other; while in
Belgium the latter classes, which control the Catholic Party, have
a Parliamentary majority over the laborers and urban middle
classes combined. The Belgium Liberals then have had everything to
win by a strike, which aims at establishing the French situation
in that country. As for the Socialists, equal suffrage would
undoubtedly have the effect of driving the Liberals and Catholics
together into the same government, as in Germany, thus making the
Socialists _the_ opposition party. It would also result ultimately
in whatever social and labor reforms the Liberals might feel it to
their interest to grant. But this is all.
This is why thoughtful Socialists the world over, including
several of the Belgian leaders (Vandervelde, Huysmans, De
Brouckère and Bertrand) have been so dubious about the strike.
They have seen that the burden of the contest will fall about
equally on employers and employes. But the Liberal employers are
playing for a splendid stake—Belgium; while the Socialists are
playing only for such incidental and secondary benefits as will
accrue to them from Liberal control of the country. Naturally they
have had far more dread of the costs and risks which the strike
involves.
But whether the strike was to be lost or won it has been clear
that it would interest the world’s millions of Socialists more
deeply than ever in the possibilities and the limitations of the
general strike.
All Socialists favor the political general strike, most Socialists
favor the general strike against war—including the conservatives
like Keir Hardie and Jean Jaurès. The moderate Swedes had an
economic general strike a few years ago and this form is favored
also by the majority of French and Italian labor unionists. And
now the British unionists are voting on the question whether they
will all quit work each day after eight hours—which would mean a
general lock-out, or practically a general strike.
Whether the Belgians win or lose will not affect the momentum of
the movement. If they win, general strikes for a few years will
take a predominantly political character, and we shall see the
general political strike resumed in Hungary within a few months
and doubtless declared in Prussia before many years. If they lose
these British, French and Italian movements toward economic
general strikes will have the field.
The historian of the future when writing of our generation will
have to give a central position—perhaps _the_ central position—to
the general strike.
-----
Footnote 1:
See THE SURVEY for October 5, 1912.
Footnote 2:
It is now reported that the opponents of the law, which goes
into effect August 1, have started an effort to secure the
19,535 signatures necessary for a petition to have the law
submitted to a referendum vote.
Footnote 3:
Drawn from a case record of the New York Charity Organization
Society.
Footnote 4:
Number based not on total number of cases but on scholarship,
conduct and attendance cases, respectively.
Footnote 5:
Most of the quotations here given are taken from Songs from the
Ghetto. By Morris Rosenfeld. Translated into prose by Leo
Wiener. Copeland & Day, Boston. 1898. Price $1.00.
Footnote 6:
Rosenfeld’s poetry in this respect is the antithesis of that of
Arturo Giovannitti. See THE SURVEY of November 2, 1912.
Footnote 7:
Pendulum.
Footnote 8:
I work and work and work—without end; I am busy and busy and
busy at all times.
Footnote 9:
The Counting—the forty-nine days of the Feast of the Seven
Weeks.
Footnote 10:
My Little Sister. By Elizabeth Robins. Dodd, Mead and Co. 344
pp. Price $1.25. By mail of THE SURVEY $1.37.
Footnote 11:
Of 478 defendants, fifty-three women are involved or implicated.
Of those, eighteen are found not guilty, are dismissed, or cases
are pending.
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